Kids/Guest Bathroom Re-do

The beginning of this month, we had one of the guys from our ministry move in with us until he gets married at the end of this coming September. Since the bathroom he is using is the one place we haven't touched since moving in except for replacing the toilet, we decided that it was time to make some improvements in there.

Here are a few before pictures:

This is the nasty fan that didn't work at all...
It was so caked with grime and junk. I was thoroughly disgusted when I was cleaning it out. I thought if we cleaned it, then it would work...I was wrong. We ended up replacing the motor and fan blades (which was much cheaper than replacing the whole fan)

The medicine cabinet was broken when we moved in as well, so we decided to remove it and Phil built a built-in to replace it.

I don't have a before for the mirror that was up there, but it was a pretty standard
gigantic mirror that stretched from wall to wall. We removed it.

Here are the after shots:

In this shot, we still didn't have a mirror...we do now, which will be my next post...but here, you can see the new paint color (which is the wrong color, so eventually we're going to re-paint the bathroom a shade darker)

Here you can see some of the wainscoting behind the toilet

We put up wainscoting all around the bathroom. We think it makes the bathroom feel so much more fresh and clean.

We put in a new low-flow shower head (which, by the way, we did in our bathroom as well). We just got our latest water bill and have already saved $10 off our bill just from our shower usage alone!

Here is the built-in Phil constructed. We still need to put shelves in, but I think this is a huge improvement from what was there...

Overall, this took us about 2 solid days and a few nights to complete...not bad considering what we did (new lighting, new shower head, built-in medicine cabinet, paint, and wainscoting). I still have new drawer pulls to install as well.

Garden

If you remember last year, I attempted a garden in our backyard directly in the dirt that's back there...
Last year, it was strictly a "test run" just to see if we could even sustain anything back there. Well, it turned out that we had something that loved to eat entire plants at one time...so we went from having a garden to having just tomatoes and chives.

This year, I thought for sure we'd have our yard in but being that both fences blew down during this past winter, the yard is yet again put on hold for a while longer. I decided to do a container garden and a small raised garden made from reused wood from a bench that was out in our yard. We'll see how it turns out. I'm just hoping nothing eats it all again this year. :)

Laundry Soap

I've been looking for a while for a recipe that I could use to make our own Laundry Soap.

I finally found one that works great (I might even be tempted to say that it works better than any other laundry detergent that I have ever used). And, its so inexpensive to boot!

Here's the recipe:

1 bar of Fels Naptha soap (the only place I can find it is at Winco. Its located in the laundry section); grated
1/2 cup Borax (Target, Winco)
1/2 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (Winco)

Mix all together and use 2 tlbs for a large load.

Grating the Fals Naptha soap takes a little elbow grease, but its worth it.

Here's the price breakdown:
Fals Naptha $1.05
Borax $3.15 (for the box) you use approx a fraction of the box for each batch
Washing Soda $3.00ish (for the box) you use approx a fraction of the box for each batch

So, for each batch you are probably spending $1.75! You can get about 20 loads for each batch...

Try it. I'm sure you love it. This is good for HE washers too. The Fals Naptha doesn't suds up so its perfect for HE washers.